The Family Independence
Agency (FIA) is charged with three essential tasks: “to help meet the financial,
medical, and social needs of individuals and families living in Michigan who are
unable to provide for themselves; assist those who are capable of becoming
self-sufficient through skill building, opportunity enhancement, and
family-focused services; and help protect children and vulnerable adults from
abuse, neglect, and exploitation.”[2]

The development of skills,
the creation of opportunity and the achievement of family self-sufficiency are
vital to Michigan’s economic development. A civil society protects against the
abuse, neglect or exploitation of citizens of Michigan who are too young, or too
mentally or physically disabled, to protect themselves. The question is not
whether people who need help should receive it. They should. The question is:
Who can best provide the help, and who bears the most responsibility to do so?

The Family Independence
Agency provides womb-to-grave care. The FIA provides food, shelter and
clothing. It funds adoptions, childcare, job training, reading programs, credit
counseling, and budget counseling. It makes sure children are cared for before
school and after school. It seeks to inspire children, prevent their pregnancy
and gang involvement, and develop children’s leadership skills, their ability to
manage anger, and their sense of self-sufficiency. It monitors the crime,
aggression, and academic development of young people as well as their school
attendance, drop-out rates, and their cultural and ethnic sensitivity.

The dollars spent are
significant. The first $2.75 billion comes from the federal government. Another
$1.1 billion comes from the state. Yet another $67 million comes from local
governments.[3] All of this money
comes from individuals, families, small businesses, and large corporations. All
of these entities, banding together as communities, can and do meet enormous
human welfare needs. When the state takes money from these groups it means that
they have less money to improve their own lives, and those of their own families
and neighbors. The resources taken by the state cannot be used by individuals
and private institutions to create jobs or provide health insurance or be put to
work developing new technology or medicines or be put away for a child’s college
fund.

The FIA budget of
$4,074,490,500 amounts to almost $410 per citizen[4] or $1,075 for every household in the state.[5] These numbers do
not tell the whole story, because the mission of the FIA, as stated above, is
not focused on every household in Michigan. The vast majority of citizens in
Michigan have no need for the services provided by the FIA because they are
providing for their own needs.

The FIA’s focus is
primarily the poor, those who live below the poverty level as established by the
federal government. With a budget of almost $4.1 billion, the FIA spends nearly
$4,000 per man, woman and child below the poverty level[6] or $21,163 per poor household annually.[7]

Despite this spending, many
in Michigan remain in poverty. Consider the following statewide statistics:

1 in 6 children are poor now.
(poverty level is $17,650 for a family of 4.)

It must be admitted that
despite these enormous amounts of money, the system has not significantly
alleviated poverty. Individuals and families are not rapidly moving out of
poverty. The percentage of people who live under the federal level of poverty
has remained stagnant for more than two decades despite ever-increasing amounts
of spending. Governments at every level have spent more than $6 trillion
fighting poverty with an endless array of government programs, yet U.S. poverty
rates have generally remained where they were when President Lyndon Johnson
predicted that such programs would ultimately produce “the Great Society” in
1964.

No amount of money can
fulfill a community’s responsibility for the well-being of its neighborhoods, a
neighborhood’s responsibility for the welfare of its families, a family’s
responsibility for the welfare or its members, or each individual’s
responsibility for his or her own personal welfare. What $6 trillion in
government spending can do is displace the wealth that these and other mediating
institutions such as religious and community service groups might otherwise use
to help those less fortunate.

A strong economy, one
unencumbered by unnecessary regulation and freed from extensive taxation, holds
the greatest hope for the poor. Enterprise, initiative, and investment have done
vastly more to alleviate human poverty than any poverty program. For much of
human history, poverty was the norm. While it is troubling that of 9,938,444[9] citizens in the state, 1,021,605 live below the poverty level, it
must be acknowledged that this is remarkable progress when compared even to the
history of poverty in the United States.

The source of our progress
has not been an extension of the role of the government but the growth of
business and enterprise. As Don Mathews, economics professor at Brunswick
College in Georgia has written, “By our current definition of poverty, 56
percent of families in the United States were poor in 1900. By 1947, even after
the economic shocks of the Great Depression and World War II, the percentage of
families in poverty had been reduced by more than one half, to 27 percent. By
1967, the percentage was halved again, to 13 percent. Notably, the decrease in
poverty between 1900 and 1967 occurred before the advent of the greatly expanded
welfare state. In other words, it was the free market, not government welfare,
that caused the poverty rate to fall from 56 percent in 1900 to 13 percent in
1967.”[10] It is interesting that
the last 25 years of ever-growing government budgets, greater regulations, and
more extensive government involvement in social problems have not significantly
dropped the rate of poverty. The level has remained around 10 percent for the
past 35 years.

This does not mean that the
state should play no role. There will always be some who will slip through the
cracks of particular mediating institutions. There are those who require special
help or have unique situations who have not yet been helped by families,
neighbors, friends, churches and communities. There are some services state
government provides because private or non-profit options do not yet exist in
the absence of state programs.

The behemoth FIA cannot be
brought to its proper proportions overnight and this review makes no claim to
accomplish this. Rather, the most glaring examples of FIA overstepping must be
addressed first. Over time, as civil society begins again to take its proper
place and those who predict all manner of devastation are proved wrong by
experience, more levels of bureaucracy can be dismantled and their
responsibilities once again shouldered by those best qualified.